[tldoc] Translating with Poedit & git/svn

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 06:53, Anh K. Huynh wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am using a git-fork of svn://tug.org/texlive/trunk/Master/tlpkg/translations . The git repo. is put at http://github.com:viettug/tlpkg-translations . It helps, as I don't have access to the original repository. But during my translation sessions I've found that there are some problems with merging. My working style is as below
>
> * Fetch changes from svn repository
> * Merge changes onto my current branch
> * Resolve conflicts if any
> * Using poedit to translate some strings
> * Commit my works to github
> * Switch to other tasks (at my company, for example)
> * Get some free time, and be back to the first step
>
> As I should send to Karl my latest update, there are many differences between my work and the original source. And this causes problem when merging; it often takes me quite long time to check all translated strings.
>
> I don't know any better way. If you know there is any good way to work with our project, using git or svn, please let me know. I myself suggest to use a public repository where the translators can commit code or submit patches more often. I see there is a TeXLive documents (in English) and I may translate it into Vietnamese, but my current work flow is a bit annoyed, IMHO.

I'm not sure what is the TeX Live's policy of giving commit rights to
users, but getting commit rights might be an option to help you work
slightly faster (you would probably commit translations more often?).

However you still might end up having to merge changes if you start
working on translations for some time and wait long enough before
committing that vi.po gets updated in repository due to changes in
tlmgr.



I'm also using Poedit and it is a constant battle between auto-updated
files and Poedit to "fix identation". There are two notable
differences:

1.) If lines are short enough, TL's autoupdate will merge sources, like that:

#: texmf/scripts/texlive/tlmgrgui.pl:605 texmf/scripts/texlive/tlmgrgui.pl:607

while Poedit will split them:

#: texmf/scripts/texlive/tlmgrgui.pl:605
#: texmf/scripts/texlive/tlmgrgui.pl:607

2.) TL insist in translations being shorter than 80 characters, while
Poedit insists in having as long lines as needed to fit the whole
translation between \n. (That might be an approximation, but more or
less it holds.)

-------

On top of that there are constant changes in TL that:
- change line numbers in comments
- move translations around
- change a single word in sentence and then the old translation flies
to comments and the new one appears untranslated

Concerning point 2 I can hardly argue that one approach is better than
the other (keeping lines under 80 characters certainly helps when
viewing diffs). On the other hand I prefer the comfort of using Poedit
and try to forget that it introduces way to big diffs for no reason.
(If I could configure Poedit to respect original in TL, I would do
that.)

Concerning point 1 I would prefer a single reference per line (the way
it is done in Poedit), but given the number of other diffs, this
doesn't make much difference anyway.

Mojca